« On homemade cleaners »

I don't remember when I started using homemade cleaner, but it has been some time now. It started around the same time 'green' everything was becoming uber trendy, and I couldn't afford to buy the expensive earth friendly versions at our local whole foods. Over the years, we've bought cleaners and kept the bottles for making homemade versions. Usually when we move out, we find ourselves with a new bottle to use, either from the past tenant leaving stuff, or us running out of ingredients just at the time we are moving, or ours gets lost in the shuffle and we need to buy a new bottle. 

Of course you could just buy a bottle to reuse. But, most likely you have some lying around the house. Plus, I must prefer the shape of store bought natural cleaner bottles, but this is just me being silly.

The mixture I use changes often, I just put in what I feel like smelling at the time, or what ingredients we have. For my go to base I generally use is water, white vinegar, tea tree oil, baking soda and castile soap (for that soapy clean feeling, totally not needed). 

Today when our bottle needed a top up, I found out I was out of vinegar, so I added some laundry soap (hey, why not!) and more baking soda and a couple tablespoons of sea salt. You can use essentials oil to make your cleaners smell like anything you want to. You can use all of the above, or just water and vinegar (this is my floor cleaner). 

For windows, straight up vinegar, nothing beats it. I will often use the total house cleaner I have on the go before the vinegar, because we have a puppy who loves to look out the window and rub her nose on it (enter sticky children fingers!). 

Do you make your own natural home cleaners? What is your favorite recipe?

Comments

[existere]

This post makes me laugh, because when my mother recently visited, she brought along a suitcase of horrible, harsh, monstrous-smelling chemicals to clean our place with. She said our cleaning products were 'too weak.'

[stacey]

YES!!!! i make my own cleaner. my general purpose go to recipe is reusable spray bottle fill half with water, half with white vinegar, 3 to 4 drops of dish soap about 10 drops of tea tree oil. I've been using this cleaner for about 10 years & came up with it because i suffer from skin allergies. I use straight up baking soda on my tub, & my place is spotless & doesn't smell. my boyfriend keeps buying me commercial CLEANERS. I'm actually offended when he does!!!

[Amber]

@existere A suitcase!? Man, us weaklings need a good talking to ;)

[parinteen]

I use the same mixture in a spray bottle but with lemon oil. I also have an emptied Parmesan Cheese container that I have filled with baking soda and lemon oil to sprinkle in sinks, tubs, toilets, and my stove top- just to get some good scrubbing done.

[Amber]

@SarahParinteen

Oh, lemon oil! Great idea.